by Amy Lane
“Oh my God, Bobby, gonna—maybe don’t—wanna wait a… Jesus!”
His orgasm scalded, ripping a hole through his soul, his heart, his gut. He slid down the wall, trembling, pulling out of Bobby’s mouth with the last spurt. Bobby stayed on his knees and grinned down at him, Reg’s come striped across his chin, running down his neck.
“You look pleased with yourself,” Reg said, laughing weakly.
Bobby’s eyes grew dark, and he leaned in close. “I missed your taste,” he growled. Reg leaned forward, licking his chin first before taking his mouth, tasting himself on Bobby’s lips. Bobby shifted, and Reg slid all the way down the wall, lying flat on his back on his own floor. He brought his knees up, spreading wide so Bobby could thrust against Reg’s nakedness, still clothed in his underwear.
“Skin,” Reg begged. “Please?”
Bobby groaned and pushed smoothly to his feet, extending his hand. Reg saw him for a moment, looming tall at his six-foot-five-inch height, shoulders spread, eyes glowing with promise. Larger than life, that was his Bobby, but then he took the offered hand and levered up, right into his arms.
And suddenly he was a part of that greatness, touching it, enveloped by it, skin to skin.
Bobby took his mouth again, and he found himself on his own bed, sprawled and sex-drugged, while Bobby rooted for the lube in the dresser.
Bobby came back and kissed him, then broke away, shoving two fingers into his mouth. Reg sucked, closing his eyes because he knew where those fingers were going—yearned to feel them penetrate.
“Spread your knees,” Bobby whispered, pulling back.
Reg did, looking at him with what even he knew was worship. Bobby used a wet finger to toy with his rim, circle, push through the puckered hole, and Reg’s knees fell even more open.
He wanted this. Wanted it so bad. He held his ankles to his ears, knees to his chest, while Bobby kneeled beside him and fingered his rim.
“You are so prime,” Bobby whispered, sounding awed. “Just begging for me?”
“You have no idea,” Reg whispered, tilting his head back and closing his eyes. His entire body floated in the dark for a moment, and then the penetration in his ass became a bright spot, glowing orange. Bobby widened the circle going in, and the spot became a ring, burning, aching, glorious and red.
A little lube cooled it, and then the ache resumed, spread, two fingers, scissoring wider, and Reg groaned. He shoved his body down and pulled back, down and back, wanting more.
“Easy.” Bobby planted his other hand on Reg’s chest. “I want to make sure you’re ready.”
Reg opened his eyes and reached over to stroke Bobby’s cock. Iron-hard and damned long, it wept at the end with so much attention.
“I will always be ready,” Reg told him. “All of you. All those guys that came before? That was their job. Making sure I was ready for someone as big in his heart as you are.” He squeezed hard and stroked slow, enjoying the way Bobby tilted his head back and groaned. A spurt of pre scalded his wrist, and Reg kept looking up at Bobby as he let go and brought his palm to his mouth so he could lick it off.
Bobby grunted and pulled his fingers out of Reg’s ass.
“Need!” Reg begged, arching up, and Bobby captured his hand, sucking on his thumb and forefinger, scraping the underside with his teeth.
“When we’re done here,” Bobby whispered harshly, “you’re gonna stretch me. And then you’re gonna fuck me. And you’d better make sure I’m big and wide as the world. ’Cause all I want to do when you’re fucking me is scream and come.”
Reg moaned, wanting all the things at once.
“All I wanna do now is scream and come,” he admitted. “C’mon, Bobby—I’m ready. Fuck me.”
Bobby positioned himself between Reg’s thighs, and Reg felt him, pressed up against his sphincter, battering his way in. He tilted his head back and bore down, forcing his body to swallow Bobby’s girth in one gulp, sighing in surrender as that titanic member breached him.
It filled him completely, gave Reg shape, gave him substance. The throbbing of Bobby’s cock became Reg’s heartbeat, and the smooth stroke of him inside became Reg’s breath.
Bobby pushed, relentless, sure, and rested, seated deep in Reg’s body.
Reg’s breath stopped, and he peered up at Bobby through the dim light of his room.
“I gotcha,” Bobby promised, and Reg nodded, reassured.
“Then take me,” he urged.
Bobby pulled back and thrust in hard, and Reg saw a train behind his eyes, hurtling, forceful, climbing, climbing, climbing, building every peak until it reached the top of the world.
Reg’s breath caught for a moment, he opened his eyes to see Bobby’s head thrown back, his eyes squeezed tight as he fucked hard and sure—
And the train plummeted to earth on the rails while Reg screamed with the thrill of the ride.
THEY RESTED for a moment, and Reg thought This is when we have round two, because once was never enough for Bobby to fuck.
Bobby surprised him then.
“You look tired, baby,” he said, kissing Reg’s temple.
Reg was going to say he wasn’t so old he couldn’t go again, but a yawn caught him by surprise.
“I ain’t been sleeping good,” he confessed, tired enough to use “ain’t.”
“Sleep,” Bobby whispered. “I’m going to go get a drink.”
“Mm.” Reg closed his eyes, then spoke from behind the falling curtain of unconsciousness. “Don’t wash me off. Want you inside me.”
“Good.”
“Gonna top next round.”
“Good. I want you inside me too.”
Reg smiled a little and rolled to his side. “Don’t leave,” he whispered. “I can survive if you do, but it would hurt to live.”
Bobby wrapped a sweaty arm around his shoulders. “I’m not going to leave,” he said.
“Ever,” Reg stressed. “Gonna live here.”
“Damned straight.”
“Okay, then.”
And it was enough. Wasn’t the promises in the books—not the hearts, not the flowers—but it was all Reg had never dared to dream of. He could sleep, secure in Bobby’s warmth, and wake, knowing Bobby would be there too.
It was so much more than Reg had ever thought life could hold.
Building
“I’M GOING to get some water,” Bobby whispered, waiting for Reg to mumble “Okay.” He didn’t want Reg to wake up alone, but he was too excited to sleep.
He slid on his briefs and padded across the house in the long shadows of a late-summer afternoon. He felt hot in the barely functioning AC, but he also felt revitalized—reborn. A cool shower, some Gatorade, and he and Reg would be able to keep going all night.
He longed for it—every cell in his body sang that once wasn’t enough. Not now.
Maybe not ever.
He’d gulped his second glass of ice water when the smell reached his brain. New paint. Huh.
He followed his nose up the stairs, making more notes about fixing them, carpeting them, carpeting the landing, fixing the banister, and hey, maybe getting a dog.
Reg could have a dog now. God, he’d be good with a dog—something big and steady, unshakable.
He got to the top landing and ventured into the lion’s den—and paused.
Reg had cleaned it out.
The bed, the dresser, the computer. The place was bare, right down to the floorboards, which only needed some sanding and some stain to be a real handsome floor treatment, and Reg had taped tarps around the edges.
He was trying to paint.
Yeah—he’d made about six mistakes that Bobby could see. Hadn’t taken off the baseboards first, hadn’t taped around the window ledges, was using a roller with too high of a concentration of paint, and seemed to be using all-weather paint as well, which was why it had smelled so strong.
But the mistakes didn’t matter.
What mattered was that Reg was fixing up Veronica’s
room.
What mattered was that he could make his own beginnings, with or without Bobby.
Bobby was so proud of him, he almost cried.
He was looking around, making a list in his head of things Reg might want to know—or that they could do together—when Reg came padding up.
“You disappeared,” he mumbled sleepily.
“Looking at this thing you did,” Bobby said simply. “Good job, baby.”
Reg smiled a little. “Not as good as you could do it.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Bobby shrugged. “It’s your house—you took charge. You did great.”
“Our house,” Reg said soberly. “I’ll put your name on papers, like with V. Needs to say ours.”
Oh. Bobby bit his lip. “I been waiting for that,” he admitted. “It’s had good bones all along.”
“But you fix it up so pretty,” Reg said, smiling enough to glow. He blinked then, and his smile went shy. Sultry. “God, you look good.”
Oh yeah. Bobby had known. They weren’t over yet. Not by a long shot.
“Wanna shower?” he asked. “Nice cool shower?”
“Yeah,” Reg said. “You first. I’m gonna hydrate.”
Bobby laughed, low and dirty, and pinned him to the wall that wasn’t painted yet with a hungry kiss.
They had to wash that wall again when they were through—and then they showered.
And hydrated.
And by God did it all again.
BY THE beginning of September the heat still hadn’t faded, so Bobby was fixing the porch in the early mornings. His residuals from his porn videos were enough to pay expenses, so he hadn’t found another job yet. He was too busy fixing the place up.
They’d completely redone the top floor, bathroom too, including painting over Reg’s original paint job, which Reg didn’t seem to mind in the least. They were going to ask Bobby’s mom if she wanted to move in, but she seemed to really love her apartment, and her new independence, and even her new job, taking over as the receptionist for Johnnies now that Kelsey had a new position helping their non-porn-related industries. Apparently Bobby’s mom was doing all the Dex things—making sure the guys had enough to eat and a safe place to stay and the numbers of the counselors and doctors they might need if something came up.
She seemed to be really happy, Bobby thought in admiration. She sat behind the desk and worked her needlepoint and fielded calls, and for some reason, the guys really adored her. For that matter, so did the few girls on the roster. He never thought of a middle-aged woman being in high demand behind the desk of a porn company—but he remembered Dex saying something about all the guys needing mommies.
Apparently she was the mommy everyone had needed. He was proud of her—and damned glad she wasn’t living up in Dogpatch with Frank Gilmore anymore. She even got grandbabies, in a way, because she was de facto babysitter when Ethan and Jonah needed the time off.
So she wasn’t going to take the top floor, which meant Reg could put in bookshelves and a weight set and some exercise machines—just so they didn’t have to go in to the gym every day. And he bought a computer desk and set up a computer. Bobby was going to figure out how to play games on it—Reg did so good on everybody else’s game console—but that’s not what he wanted it for.
He used it for research, to look up the things he didn’t know, to look up places he’d never been. He used it for work too, now that he was getting booked out months at a time, and learning some of the things Dex did to promote the guys and give them as many options to make money as they needed.
With the walls painted ecru and a throw rug under the computer and mats under the weights, it looked as different as it could from V’s pink prison of madness, and Bobby thought that did Reg’s heart a world of good.
V had finally gotten to a permanent facility—a decent one, thanks to Reg’s health insurance and her own social security. She could check herself out for two-hour time blocks and walk to the store or take in a movie—even just walk around the neighborhood without an escort. In return, she had to be there, morning, noon, and night, to take her medication, and submit to blood-test levels once a week.
They’d visited her, taken her out to lunch, and Bobby thought that while she was just as disconnected as she’d ever been—still wore long-sleeved shirts to keep the bugs from coming out—she was also a little more lucid.
For example, she knew Bobby was Reg’s boyfriend, and the word “faggot” hadn’t once made an appearance.
Reg had been so happy after that visit, so relieved he wasn’t abandoning his sister, that Bobby had needed to just lie on the bed and hold him while he babbled. He talked about trips to the park with her when they were little, and the way she’d looked after Queenie’s first two children, and the way she’d always been the smart one.
Bobby had never been so grateful for intervention of any sort as he was for the intervention of that social worker, who had taken their small family in crisis and helped get V to a better place. It was worth two weeks in jail, just for her happiness and Reg’s peace of mind.
All in all, Bobby was pretty content as he hauled out the materials and started to build the framework for the new porch. They’d worked out early, Reg was at Johnnies, and he basically had about six hours before the heat got too intense, and he could get enough of the porch framed out and built to walk on, just for today. He didn’t have a scene for another three weeks, so he and Reg could spend the afternoon inside having loud noisy sex, or they could go to the pool at the gym and swim laps. Both options sounded good, although Bobby was rooting for the loud noisy sex, just because you couldn’t go wrong with that.
Ever.
He worked quickly and competently, idly watching the crew hired to flip the house next door as they did their thing too. He saw a lot of ugly rugs come out, as well as a lot of warped floorboards and baseboards, and some warped drywall as well.
Yeah, the people next door had owned a lot of cats. Apparently they’d inherited some property up in the hills where there wasn’t a cat limit, and Bobby wished them well in their version of Dogpatch. It was good to know there were people who could be happy out there—as long as it wasn’t Bobby or his mom.
He was just nailing the last board into place in the interim walkway when he saw the foreman of the crew walking across the newly seeded lawn, pausing at the brand-new, unstained porch steps Bobby had just erected.
“This here’s good work,” he said. In his fifties, with sandy-brown chin scruff to match his bird’s nest of hair and a faded blue baseball hat, the guy struck him as tough. Stringy, probably strong as an ox, he wore blue jeans and a tan T-shirt with faded blue chambray over it.
His work boots were of the highest quality—and still beat to shit.
Bobby had respect for those boots, even though he didn’t know the man.
Who let out a low whistle as he surveyed Bobby’s work.
“That there, son, is some prime workmanship. That is a thing of beauty.”
Bobby allowed himself a small smile of pride. “Thank you, sir,” he said, glancing up before going back to hammering in the next nail with one blow.
“You got an outfit you work for?” the guy asked, and Bobby paused and sat up on his knees, grateful for the pad underneath.
“No, sir.”
“I seen you out here a lot. You got a job?”
Bobby’s lips twisted. He figured he knew where this was going, but he wasn’t going to work for no place that didn’t like who the fuck he was.
“Yes, sir.”
“Doing this?” The guy used his hat to gesture to the framed porch.
“No, sir. Fucking for money.”
Oh yeah. He would enjoy the memory of that nice man’s gray eyes bugging out of his head for years to come.
“Really.”
“Yes, sir. Johnnies. Gay porn. My boyfriend works promotions.”
Eyes weren’t getting any smaller. “Really?”
“Yes, sir.”
And t
hen a wonderful thing happened. The man’s long, weathered face was taken over with a tremendous, riotous smile.
“That’s amazing. Wait ’til I tell my nephew. He’s in college, and he thinks I don’t know anyone cool. He’ll get a kick out of that. You got any posters you could sign?”
Bobby half laughed. “I can have Reg bring some home. Be happy to. You’ll be here tomorrow?”
“Be here for the next two weeks.” The guy looked the porch up and down. “You wouldn’t want a second job, would you?”
Some of Bobby’s glee leaked away. “Last time I worked construction… well, the guy wasn’t so ethical,” he said, hating that story, that time, the year before.
“I’m as honest as they come.” The guy reached into his wallet then and pulled out a card. “Here—I’m going to tuck this in your tool chest, okay? Says Charlie Swanton. Look me up. I’m reputable, and union. I’m telling you, son—I’ve trained a lot of guys on the job, but I’ve never seen anyone as young as you are with this sense of workmanship. It’s a thing you can’t teach. I’d love to have you with my outfit. We’d let you have time off for your other job and everything.”
Bobby knew his own eyes widened. “Really?”
Charlie Swanton lifted a shoulder. “You were straight up with me, man. I can’t object to that. I’m just damned impressed.”
Bobby pursed his lips and nodded, thinking about Reg’s cabinets they could replace, and furniture and siding for the outside and…
And a job that wouldn’t depend on his complete fuckability.
“I’ve got a record,” he said baldly, his voice shaking with a little bit of shame. “Just so you know.”
“What did you do?” Charlie asked, surprised.
“A cop called my boyfriend a name. I sort of saw red.”
Charlie sucked air in through his teeth and whacked his thigh with the baseball hat a couple of times. “Your temper do that to you a lot?” he asked, like this was important.
“Not after jail time,” Bobby said. “You learn a lot about defending yourself and walking the hell away.”